1. Field of the Invention
The invention is directed to an anti-wrap extension that can be mounted to existing reels used on agricultural harvesting platforms.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Combines are large agricultural machines for retrieving grain from a crop. They perform five basic crop harvesting operations: harvesting, threshing, separating, cleaning and handling. A harvesting platform, corn head, row crop head or a pickup platform is located at the front of the combine for cutting or gathering the crop and directing it to a feederhouse which directs the harvested crop to the other operations.
Harvesting platforms maybe provided with a pickup reel. A pickup reel has a number of downwardly projecting tines mounted to elongated bats which engage a down or tangled crop pulling the crop against a cutterbar which cuts the crop from the ground. A transverse auger directs the cut crop to the feederhouse for further processing.
Pickup reels may comprise five or six elongated tubes that are mounted to at least two spiders. The elongated tubes form bats that extend across the width of the platform. A series of downwardly projecting tines are mounted along the length of each tube. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,776,155, 4,833,869 and 4,891,932 disclose various bat configurations for reels.
The reel operates in a great variety of crop conditions. It directly engages the crop and in some conditions is susceptible to wrapping or hairpinning of crop around the elongated tube. When wrapping occurs reel performance deteriorates significantly. One anti-wrapping protector is proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,472,928.